“Cold as Ice” by Foreigner

Foreigner's 1977 debut album almost went without "Cold as Ice". Producer Gary Lyons decided one of the songs lined up for the record didn't belong (Ian McDonald suspects it was "Take Me to Your Leader"), so Mick Jones went home, sat down at his piano, and the riff came tumbling out; he and Lou Gramm built the rest of the song from there. Lyons liked what he heard, and the band cut it at Atlantic Studios in one night, with Lyons and McDonald up till morning on the vocals.

That piano riff is the hook, hard and staccato, and Gramm's lead vocal has real bite over it while Dennis Elliott and Ed Gagliardi lock down the rhythm and Al Greenwood's synthesizer adds the chill. It started out as a B-side on some pressings of "Feels Like the First Time" before climbing to number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in its own right.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.